JFK’s 100th birthday: 100 reasons Palm Beach is a Kennedy town

Friday

A hundred years ago Monday, John F. Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, the second child of Joe and Rose Kennedy.

A Democrat, he was elected 35th president of the United States in 1960, beating Richard Nixon.

By then, the Kennedy family had established a beach head in Palm Beach, where JFK’s father had purchased a home on the island’s north end in 1933. That home became the Winter White House after the election of the young president. With glamorous Jackie by his side, the new First Couple spent holidays and spring weekends in Palm Beach, bringing a lingering glamour and youthful vitality to a staid resort town.

RELATED: JFK in Palm Beach: Where the ‘Kennedy identity’ grew

For the commemoration of his 100th birthday, here are 100 reasons that Palm Beach will always be a Kennedy town.

PHOTOS: The Kennedys in Palm Beach, through 1963

2015: The Kennedy estate in Palm Beach. File photo

THE EARLY YEARS

Palm Beach as winter getaway

*The Kennedy family has more than 100 years of history in Palm Beach, beginning when Rose Fitzgerald first came to the resort with her father in 1911, before she married Joe Kennedy.

*A U.S. Congressman and two-term mayor of Boston, John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald and his wife, Mary, frequently escaped Boston winters by vacationing at the Royal Poinciana Hotel.

*After their marriage in 1914, Rose and Joe Kennedy began taking a winter vacation in Palm Beach.

*After their children were born, Joe Kennedy came down alone by train every winter starting in 1926, staying for several months.

*Rose visited for brief periods, but her life was in Boston with the growing Kennedy clan.

*Joe and Rose bought the Mizner-designed mansion called La Querida for $120,000 in 1933 as a holiday beach house for his family. The home’s name has frequently been mistakenly recorded as La Guerida.

*Joe Kennedy joined the mostly Jewish Palm Beach Country Club in order to play golf. When they were older, his sons sometimes joined him on the links.

*JFK’s golf bag from the club is in the Kennedy Presidential Library with a tag that reads: “Palm Beach Country Club for Pres. JF Kennedy, Rack number 1.”

A plaque marks the pew used by John F. Kennedy at St. Edward Catholic Church in Palm Beach. (Lannis Waters/The Palm Beach Post)

GROWING UP IN PALM BEACH

Fun at the movies, lunch counter

*JFK and his siblings roamed the island during school vacations.

*One of their favorite spots was Green’s Pharmacy, which opened in 1938 at the corner of Sunrise Avenue and North County Road.

*The Kennedy kids scarfed hamburgers and French fries at the luncheonette, which is still open today.

*The Paramount Movie Theatre at 139 N. County Road was the Kennedy children’s local movie house.

*All his life, JFK associated Palm Beach with rest and health.

*A sickly child, Jack recuperated from illnesses in Palm Beach in 1931 and 1934, when he was taught by private tutors.

*The Kennedy family attended St. Edward’s Catholic Church on South County Road.

*But Joe Kennedy also built a chapel in his home.

*After graduating from Harvard in 1940, JFK came to Palm Beach for six weeks with a rotating group of friends.

On stationary labeled “North Ocean Boulevard, Palm Beach, Florida, John F. Kennedy wrote the first draft of his announcement for the Presidency.

THE POST-WAR YEARS

Recuperating, planning for the future

*After World War II, JFK wrote “Profiles in Courage” while staying at his father’s house and recuperating from his war injuries.

*In 1954, two years after he was elected U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, JFK spent three months in Palm Beach, recovering from serious back surgery in Palm Beach.

*In late 1959, while still a senator from Massachusetts, JFK wrote out in longhand the speech that propelled him into history.

*On stationary imprinted with his parents’ Palm Beach address, “North Ocean Boulevard, Palm Beach, Florida,” JFK wrote the first, undated draft of his announcement that he was running for President of the United States. “I am announcing today my candidacy for the Presidency of the United States,” he began.

THE PRESIDENT-ELECT

Planning a new administration

*After defeating Richard Nixon in November, 1960, the youngest president ever elected in the U.S. retreated to his father’s Palm Beach house to plan his administration, as the country basked in a wave of optimism, promise and glamour.

*Crowds pressed up against Kennedy at Gates 5 and 6 of PBIA when he returned home after the election, with some holding signs reading “West Palm Beach for Kennedy.”

*Offices for the president-elect and his staff were created in the recently-built Palm Beach Towers Condominium, where the Royal Poinciana Hotel once stood. Decisions on Cabinet appointments and other personnel were made there.

*Instead of being stuck in cold, staid Washington, Press Secretary Pierre Salinger held press conferences among the palms at the condo complex while speechwriter Ted Sorenson worked on the inaugural address by the pool.

*Kennedy and vice-president-elect Lyndon B. Johnson held a Palm Beach news conference in Palm Beach to discuss their legislative agenda, which included health care for the elderly and economic hope for the poor.

*After his son’s election, Joe Kennedy quietly resigned from the Everglades Club, to avoid awkward questions about belonging to a restricted club.

*As president-elect, JFK and his family flew back and forth out of Palm Beach International Airport on their own plane, the Caroline, named after his daughter and oldest child, as they had since he became a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts.

*As president, he flew to PBIA on Air Force One.

*In those less security-conscious days, well-wishers and local dignitaries often surrounded the president on the airport tarmac.

*JFK wrote much of his inaugural address in longhand at his father’s house.

*JFK’s staff and Secret Service detail often stayed at The Colony Hotel, where special telephone lines would be connected to the White House switchboard. Sometimes, calls came from the White House to order pizza to be delivered in Palm Beach.

*While the president-elect was staying in Palm Beach, a deranged anti-Catholic postal worker named Richard Paul Pavlick was arrested on Palm Beach’s north bridge carrying seven sticks of dynamite in his car, intent on killing Kennedy.

*The day of the president’s inaugural, actress Judy Garland, who had been staying at The Colony, left her blue sequined dress behind in her suite. A jet from Homestead Air Force Base was dispatched to Palm Beach International Airport to collect the dress and deliver it to Washington.

Peanut Island: The bunker built for JFK near the old Coast Guard station on Peanut Island. Staff photo by Stephanie Welsh.

A PRESIDENTIAL BUNKER

An escape plan in case of nuclear war

*In 1961, the Secret Service and a contingent of Navy Seabees secretly built a blast-hardened, radiation-proof bomb shelter on Peanut Island for JFK in case of nuclear war.

*Locals were told the Seabees were building a munitions depot for the nearby Coast Guard station on the island.

*If JFK was staying in Palm Beach when nuclear war broke out, he would have been spirited to the bunker by boat from an Intracoastal dock, probably at the Sailfish Club.

*The President would have likely stayed only a few days at the bunker before being whisked to a secure location by helicopter or submarine.

*Kennedy is said to have visited once or twice during security drills.

*The bunker’s grim Doomsday décor contained decontamination showers, gas masks, bunk beds, freeze-dried food and large water barrels that would have become toilets after use.

*A rear escape hatch led up and out in case the Russians really were coming.

*The Quonset hut-shaped structure was dug into a sand hill and buried with foliage.

*A similar bunker was built on Nantucket, near the Kennedy compound in Hyannis, Ma., in 1961. It has never been opened to the public.

*After the Kennedy years, the bunker became a party depot for teenagers.

*It was restored in the 1990s and is open for public tours run by the Palm Beach Maritime Museum, which also runs the former Coast Station next door.

*Ethel Kennedy, JFK’s sister-in-law, visited the bunker for the first time in 2012, bringing her son, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and a number of grandchildren.

*She told the manager of the bunker and the nearby former Coast Guard station that her family had “always known (the bunker) was here” but had never visited.

*The government denied the bunker existed until 1974. It’s said to be one of the best-preserved remaining Cold War artifacts.

December 1962: Pres. John F. Kennedy plays Santa as he hands a Christmas stocking to his daughter, Caroline and her cousin, Christina Radziwill. Credit: Cecil Stoughton. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

THE WINTER WHITE HOUSE

JFK mixes business, holidays in Palm Beach

*During Easter 1961, Secretary of State Dean Rusk flew to Palm Beach to brief JFK on what he saw during a trip to Southeast Asia.

*At the Christmas holidays in 1961, JFK met with the president of Argentina, Arturo Frondizi, in Palm Beach.

*In January, 1962, JFK visited Saudi Arabia’s King Faud, who was recuperating from surgery in an mansion on the island.

*JFK opened the Seattle World’s Fair by telephone from Palm Beach in April, 1962.

*As president, JFK and Jackie sometimes rented C. Michael Paul’s house on the north end of the island, near his parents’ home.

*Surrounded by high hedges, the home was more private and more easily secured than his father’s estate.

*JFK spent his last Christmas and Easter in Palm Beach, staying at the Paul house.

RELATED: rare photos of JFK’s final Palm Beach Christmas

*During their Christmas vacation in 1962, the Kennedy kids and children of friends put on a Christmas pageant, watched by their parents, as well as Rose and Joe Kennedy, along with Jackie’s sister, Lee Radziwill and her husband, a Polish emigree prince.

*Photos taken by a White House photographer that day show a typically chaotic family scene, with Jackie wrestling kids and dogs for a photo. In one photo, she’s lost a shoe.

*The president spent his last Easter in Palm Beach, boating with friends, including his buddy and Under Secretary of the Navy Paul “Red” Fay, on the family’s Honey Fitz yacht.

*Intrigued by a unusual and fast sailboat buzzing the presidential yacht, JFK hailed the boat and asked for a ride.

December 1962: Christmas in Palm Beach Florida at the C. Michael Paul residence, where the First Family stayed. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy plays with John Jr. and Charlie, the dog. Caroline Kennedy gazes at the Christmas stocking hung on the fireplace. Credit: Cecil Stoughton. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston.

*The twin-hulled sailboat was one of the first catamarans seen on Lake Worth, and the two Navy men were fascinated.

*Toni Briant Hollis, now a Palm Beach real estate agent, was among the passengers on the sailboat that day.

*She climbed aboard the presidential yacht to make room for the president and Fay.

*On that windy Easter, the president manned the sailboat’s tiller for what The Palm Beach Post the next day said was a 23 mph ride back and forth across the lake.

*“He knew how to sail, you could tell it,” said the boat’s owner, boat designer Paul Lindenberg.

*Also that weekend, he played with son John John in the pool with a toy boat and participated in an Easter egg hunt.

*Jackie Kennedy took house guests on a shopping trip to Lilly Pulitzer’s Worth Avenue shop during their stay on Palm Beach.

*Jackie Kennedy was one of the early adopters of Lilly Pulitzer’s casual cotton shifts.

*She often wore them with the two-tone leather sandals from Stephen Bonanno’s Palm Beach Sandals, which are still made in West Palm Beach.

Kathy Fay (standing) of Delray Beach and her little sister, Sally, color eggs with first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, Caroline and John Kennedy in Palm Beach on Easter weekend, 1963. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

*That weekend, Mrs. Kennedy colored Easter eggs with Caroline, John John and the Fay children.

*Fay’s daughter, Kathy, who lives in Delray Beach, was among the group of children clustered around the kitchen table, captured by a White House photographer.

*The president asked her what to play on a jukebox at the house. She thinks it was a song from the musical “Camelot.”

*Shortly before Christmas, 1961, Joe Kennedy suffered a massive stroke while playing golf at the Palm Beach Country Club. He was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital in West Palm Beach, but never spoke clearly again for the rest of his life.

*JFK, Jackie and Robert F. Kennedy all visited Joe at St. Mary’s.

*Girl Scouts sang Christmas carols to the President and first lady at St. Mary’s.

*After her husband’s stroke, Rose Kennedy began spending more time in Palm Beach, attending luncheons and charity events.

*In January 1962, JFK met with Vice President Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and other top brass in Palm Beach to discuss problems with the organization of the Army. Johnson was in Texas and was summoned to Palm Beach for the meeting.

PHOTOS: Inside the Kennedy estate

*Abstract expressionist artist Elaine De Kooning once sketched JFK at the family home in Palm Beach.

*Movie star Peter Lawford, who was married to JFK’s younger sister, Pat, was occasionally spotted by fans as an occasional guest of the family in Palm Beach.

*The Kennedys, particularly Jackie, Caroline and John John, frequently dined at the now-closed Hamburger Heaven on South County Road.

*The family often attended Mass at St. Edwards Catholic Church in Palm Beach, where a plaque reads “President John F. Kennedy knelt here at mass.” It’s on the north side, eight pews from the rear.

*The family occasionally worshipped at St. Ann’s Catholic Church in West Palm Beach.

*Former Palm Beach County Commissioner Karen Marcus grew up in North Palm Beach. Once, during a Sunday ride to Palm Beach in the family’s Oldsmobile convertible, they saw JFK and Jackie.

*The Kennedys were also in a convertible. Both families exchanged “hellos.”

*When the Kennedys were in town, lunch was an informal buffet, recalled former U.S. Sen. George Smathers, who was best man at the wedding of JFK and Jackie.

Kennedy family photos decorate the walls of the Camelot bar and lounge in downtown West Palm Beach. (Richard Graulich / The Palm Beach Post)

JFK’S LAST WEEKEND

Before Dallas, he was in Palm Beach

*The last weekend of his life was spent quietly in Palm Beach on November 15-16, where he stayed at his father’s house.

*On Saturday, JFK flew to Cape Canaveral to watch the successful firing of a Polaris missile from a submarine, and inspected construction of the massive Saturn rocket which would take men to the moon six years after his death.

*Back in Palm Beach in the afternoon, he watched the Navy-Duke football game on TV.

RELATED: Timeline of JFK’s last weekend in Palm Beach

*JFK attended Mass at St. Ann’s on his final Sunday in Palm Beach, five days before he was killed.

*Later that day, JFK watched the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers play football, then screened the new movie, “Tom Jones.”

*Following a Monday trip to Tampa and Miami, JFK confided to his friend, Sen. George Smathers, that he had some anxiety about his upcoming trip to Texas.

*The last Kennedy photo taken in Palm Beach shows him wearing a rumpled suit as he walks to Air Force One, shaking someone’s hand while smiling and squinting into the bright Florida sun.

AFTER JFK’S DEATH

Selling off the Kennedy links to Palm Beach

*The mayor of West Palm Beach asked residents to show their respect to the president by displaying a candle in the window of their homes on Sunday, Nov. 24.

*After the assassination, fundraising took off when the planned Lake Worth Hospital changed its name to John F. Kennedy Hospital.

*A middle school in Riviera Beach was also named for the late president.

*In 1995, the Kennedy family sold the now-ramshackle Winter White House, which they had never bothered to air-condition - for $5 million.

*New owners Bob and Marianne Castle renovated the house but kept much of the Kennedy’s furniture, some of it attributed to Mizner Industries, the West Palm Beach factory where architect Addison Mizner created new “rusticated” Spanish- and Venetian-style antiques for the Palm Beach palazzos he designed.

*The Castles sold the former Kennedy mansion in 2015 for $31 million to Jane Goldman, a part-time Palm Beacher. Following the sale, the Castles sold the Kennedys’ furnishings at auction.

*In 2014, the Camelot restaurant and bar opened in downtown West Palm Beach, decorated with photos of JFK and his family. There is a large mural of JFK in sunglasses on the outer wall.

*Today, there is no longer any Kennedy family-owned home in Palm Beach, only memories.